Companies often overlook the most important target audience of a public relations campaign – their own employees.

Making employees fall in love with their job and their employer all over again is one of the best ways to inspire them to produce work that transmits that passion and self-identity to a broader audience.

There was no better time to tackle that company-wide selfie project than in celebrating our 20th anniversary. To do this, we decided to literally shoot for the stars. And take our employees with us.

To be more precise, we shot miniature likenesses (Almatars) of each employee into space, filmed it, and returned the Almatars back to each employee.

They got a huge kick out of it and understood what we were trying to say. We’ve got soul and we’re going places. Like, maybe, outer space.

Even though this project was lighthearted and aimed at making people happy to be an Almatar in our collective universe, it was important that the underlying message had some philosophical heft to it as well. That’s where the soul part came in.

We customized small Lego figures with the face and even hairstyle of each employee. We made sure that each one weighed exactly 21 grams. We arranged them on a tiered platform similar to a theater, covered them with a clear plastic shield and sent them out to a desert launch platform.

A camera was attached to the ensemble to record the journey of those 111 little souls from the Earth to the vacuum of space and back again. Each employee got the Alamatar back, along with a QR code link to view the experience whenever they need a little bit of inspiration.

Like souls and their weight, our results are not exactly tangible. But the 111 owners of these Almatar souls renewed their sense of pride through this unusual way of celebrating the 20-year milestone. They got a huge kick out of it and understood what we were trying to say.

We enhanced our Alma souls’ sense of belonging to a place that seeks to elevate not just the work, but the spirit as well. In the end, we had 111 happy, inspired and renovated souls.

Our employees bragged on their social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) about how cool Alma was and used the hashtag #myagencyisbetterthanyours.

About 90% of our employees took their bragging rights to social media, using hashtags like #MyAgencyisBetterThankYours #Almatars. During that time period we had some of the highest engagement from our employees across our social media platforms.